Over the past seventy years, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has undergone a profound transformation from a coastal defense force into a rapidly modernizing blue-water navy, poised to challenge U.S. maritime primacy in the Indo-Pacific. This evolution has been driven by shifts in China’s strategic environment, doctrinal innovation, economic imperatives, and lessons drawn from historical great-power competition.
Initially, the PLAN existed to guard China’s littoral zones under Mao Zedong, as the People’s Liberation Army focused on land conflicts. The post–Cold War era marked a doctrinal shift: peaceable settlement of border disputes enabled Deng Xiaoping to redirect resources toward naval modernization. By the late 1990s, Chinese strategists embraced a “Mahanian Moment,” recognizing that secure sea lines of communication (SLOCs) were vital to sustain burgeoning trade and energy imports.
China’s fast‐growing economy and heavy reliance on maritime energy imports exposed its vulnerability at chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca. To safeguard these lifelines, Beijing prioritized PLAN capabilities for distant-sea protection and established a “string of pearls” network of overseas facilities—from Pakistan to Djibouti—laying groundwork for forward logistics.
Guided by Admiral Liu Huaqing’s strategic vision, China first invested in asymmetric anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems—anti-ship ballistic missiles, fast attack craft, and land-based launchers. It then shifted to “symmetrical” platforms: Type 052D destroyers, Type 055 guided-missile cruisers, nuclear submarines, and aircraft carriers (Liaoning and Shandong). Concurrent enhancements in C4ISR systems have bolstered command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. By 2025, the PLAN fields more major surface combatants than the U.S. Navy and outpaces U.S. shipbuilding rates, narrowing the qualitative edge through incremental capability improvements.
China’s naval doctrine has progressed from “near-coast defense” to “forward defense,” aiming to operate beyond the First Island Chain into the Second. The South Sea Fleet, centered on the strategically vital South China Sea, receives priority resources. Multi-theater exercises—from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea—demonstrate growing logistical reach. Under Xi Jinping, naval modernization is framed as national rejuvenation; the PLAN is portrayed as both a source of pride and a guarantor of “core interests” such as Taiwan’s reunification. Complementary measures—maritime militia deployments and legal-maritime tactics—augment purely naval power.
